Days after an asteroid passed Earth at 94,000 kilometers per hour, astronomers discovered the fastest orbiting asteroid in the solar system, with an orbit around the sun of just 113 Earth days. Asteroid 2021 PH27 was discovered by the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) in Chile.
Scott S. Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution of Science found the asteroid while crawling through data collected by the Dark Energy Camera on the Víctor M Blanc Telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. The images of the unidentified object were first captured on August 13 by Ian Dell’antonio and Shenming Fu of Brown University.
2021 PH27 not only has the smaller orbit but also the smallest mean distance of all known asteroid in our solar system – only Mercury has a shorter period and a smaller major semi-axis. Astronomers said the asteroid is so close to the Sun’s massive gravitational field that it is experiencing the greatest general relativity effects of any known object in the solar system.
What is asteroid 2021 PH27?
2021 PH27 has an ellipse of 70 million kilometers, which gives a 113 day time Orbit time in an extended orbit that crosses the orbits of Mercury and Venus how about the sun.
Astronomers believe it is part of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but has been shifted due to gravitational disturbances from the inner planets pulling it closer to the Sun. The researchers are also analyzing a different angle if it is a comet instead, as it has a high orbit inclination of 32 degrees and could have come from the outer solar system, but when passing near one of the terrestrial planets in a tighter orbit with a short period was captured.
The Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter telescope under the stars. (Photo: NSF)
“Its orbit is also likely to be unstable for long periods of time, and in a few million years it will likely collide with either Mercury, Venus, or the Sun, or be ejected from the inner solar system by the gravitational influence of the inner planets.” Astronomers said in a statement.
Why are we studying asteroids?
Asteroids are the key to understanding the origin of the universe and, most importantly, our own planet. How it all started “The fraction of Asteroids inside the Earth and Venus compared to the outside will give us insight into the strength and nature of these objects, “says Sheppard.
He added that understanding the population of asteroids in orbit is important in completing the census of asteroids near Earth, including some of the most likely Earth impactors that could approach the planet in daylight and those in most observations cannot be easily spotted at night, away from the sun.
Astronomers recently saw an asteroid fly past Earth at a speed of over 94,000 kilometers per hour. NASA had classified the asteroid AJ193 in 2016 as potentially dangerous because it came close to Earth on the night of August 21. The agency monitors over 26,000 near-Earth asteroids, and over 1,000 of them are considered potentially dangerous. The agency tracks the asteroid’s movement around the sun to determine its location and calculates an elliptical orbit.
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